Who did Joel kill in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us?’

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for HBO’s The Last of Us.

HBO’s The Last of Us is heating up as it speeds its way to the final episode. The latest episode of the show, “When We Are in Need,” sees Ellie (Bella Ramsey) survive on her own while waiting for Joel (Pedro Pascal) to recover. Unfortunately, a few members of a community run by a man called David (Scott Shepherd) find her.

Ellie lets them live if James (Troy Baker) ventures back to their community to get some medicine, which she needs for Joel. Unfortunately, David realized that Ellie and Joel were the ones who killed a member of his community, so he took Ellie and tasked three of his men to take out the wounded Joel. But who was it that Joel killed to anger David, and when did he kill them?

Why did David’s community want to kill Joel?

After David and James encountered Ellie, they let her go back to Joel so they could track them later. When they get back to their community, David informs them that they have found Joel, the man who killed Alec. When he was talking to Ellie, he said that he had sent four men out to scavenge and find some food, but only four had returned and Joel had killed one of them.

We can infer that Alec was the man whose neck Joel snapped at the end of episode six, “Kin”. This also means that Alec was the one who stabbed Joel, leading to him being wounded for the next two episodes. Even though they reference Alec having a daughter, we shouldn’t feel too bad about Joel killing him, after all, Joel and Ellie were packing to get out of the University of Eastern Colorado. 

Even though it wasn’t explicitly stated in the episode, one could also argue that Alec attacked Joel and Ellie to bring food back to the community. It was revealed in the episode that David was using human meat because other meat was hard to come by, and in his view, it was better to become a cannibal than starve during winter. So, if Joel hadn’t defended himself and Ellie from Alec, the pair could have ended up becoming their next supper.

It does go to show you that the series, like the game it is based on, teaches that killing humans in this world has consequences. You can catch the last episode of HBO’s The Last of Us next Sunday night on HBO Max.